By Dave Gatton
July 28, 2008

The U.S. Conference of Mayors National DollarWise Campaign presented Caguas Mayor William Miranda Marin with a $15,000 capacity grant award in a special city hall ceremony on June 26. The award will be used to advance the city’s newly created Child Trust fund.

“This is a great honor for the city,” said Miranda Marin. “The Child Trust Fund will encourage families to save for their future and move toward self'sufficiency.” The mayor was instrumental in developing the program and seeded the trust fund with an initial endowment from city general funds.

Through the trust fund, families with children born after July 1, 2007, receive an initial cash deposit of $250, to be administered on the child’s behalf by the parents or tutors. To be eligible, one of the child’s parents or a tutor must attend 25 hours of financial education and receive 15 hours of individualized counseling throughout the year. In addition, they are required to make monthly deposits of at least $10 in the child’s account during such year. Once they finish the 25-hour training course, the deposit is awarded. Eligibility is not dependent on income levels.

The program is jointly administered by the city’s Children Affairs Office and BADECO, a municipal community bank which provides high-risk loans for business development, housing acquisition, and housing rehabilitation. Various municipal departments refer families to the program and HIMA Hospital recruits families with newborns, which number around 1,700 annually.

With the funds, the city plans to increase the individualized counseling to Child Trust families, develop a citywide public media campaign on financial literacy, and launch a train-the-trainer program for the city’s financial education program.

Since 2002, the population in Caguas has had a negative savings rate, 50 percent of high school students do not graduate, and 87.5 percent of households live below the poverty line.